tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459Sun, 09 Nov 2014 10:20:25 +0000GujaratNavaratriShammi Kapoordecisive momenthow to take better picturesBollywoodChinaChinese-AmericansEgypt FoodEgypt PoorEgypt PovertyEgypt corn flakesEmmanuel ChabrierFood and GlobalizationHenri-Cartier BressonIndiaLuciano PavarottiMumbaiNRIdandiyadoppelgangeregypt exportegypt food deficitgarbaglobalizationlookalikesmeaning of clothingseparated at birthstereoscopic 3-D photography3-D glasses3-D images30 Mayo 19729/11 artifactAkkermanAmerican Victims of TerrorismArab revolutionArabs and IsraelisAustinBarbecueBeijing fried ChickenBelgorod-DniestrovskyBil'horodCedar Hill CemeteryChinese-American immigrationConfuciusConnecticut historyDriftwoodEgyptEiffel TowerEktachromeFrito-LayFulbrightGandhiHartford historyHenri Cartier-BressonHenry HudsonHolocaustIndia InkIndia communalismIndian FoodIndian clothingIndo-Pak GroceryIsraelJewsJoseph TwitchellKatherine HepburnKodachromeKodak EktarKolkata five-star hotelLagaanLares Puerto RicoLeicaLod Airport MassacreLoins of Punjab PresentsMark TwainMeals Ready to EatModiMohegan tribeMother IndiaNanoNavratriNessun DormaOberoi Grand Hotel CalcuttaOdeska OblastOutsourcedOutsourcingPeaceful CoexistencePearl BuckPepsicoPequotsPopeyeQing DynastyRadha KrishnaRed ArmyRolleiflexRong HongRussian JewsSamuel ClemensSamuel ColtSarabhaiShaboShahrukh Khan Newark AirportShanghai BundShoahSlumdog MillionaireSmart CarsSoviet JewsTaj MahalTaj MumbaiTaj hotelTexas. BarbequeThe Forbidden CityThe Good EarthThe New York TimesThe Salt Lick Barbeque BBQThe Three TenorsTrader Joe'sVarun GandhiWhole FoodsWilliam McNeillWorld HistoryWorld History AssociationWorld War IIYad VashemYung Wingclothes and meaningdabawallahdabawallahsdigital photographydutch in hartfordfood and justicefood studies globalization of foodhaircuthomespunhow to photograph betterice skating eiffel towerice-skatingikatimprove your photoskhadileaving western civpatinoire de la tour eiffelpatolupiano lessonsplaguepotato chipsrainratatouilleratssoy sauce packetswadesswimmingswimming poolsterrorismtextile historytie-dietour eiffeltour eiffel patinoirewhat do clothes mean?The Local is GlobalRamblings and rumblings about world wide webs of stuff.http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Michael)Blogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-7916588054000893608Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:30:00 +00002012-12-06T12:33:02.887-05:00Fake Food Globalization<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OtfDaiUj1I0/UMDVPHd9CpI/AAAAAAAAANE/tfaAsSEUJ4g/s1600/+559.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OtfDaiUj1I0/UMDVPHd9CpI/AAAAAAAAANE/tfaAsSEUJ4g/s320/+559.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>First post in a loooonnnng time. Couldn't help it. Don't know how much was paid for this, but I was stunned when I found it in the pantry. <i>I am guessing that my better half had a promotional coupon</i>. OK, Let's see. Nowhere on this package do the words "harira", "halal", or "kosher" appear. <b><u>Of course not</u></b>. It claims to be two servings, but I've never seen even a single serving of harira look like what came out of this package. The alleged two servings add up to a whopping 360 calories. More importantly: does it taste like harira? Yes and no. It's got date puree (not so far off the mark, but not as soup ingredient), but also sugar in it. Made with yellow lentils, not brown. What's up with the chicken? And not very liquidy. I don't know who the intended buyer is, what demographic. Not vegetarians. Someone who wants to "Go" (fast, presumably, or maybe to Morocco?) and "to rock those chickpeas." Someone too lazy to cook up a whole pot of soup. Not us, certainly not my wife. No disrespect intended! Just sayin'...http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2012/12/fake-food-globalization.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-4282983533256252235Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:41:00 +00002011-11-12T06:04:38.259-05:00AustinBarbecueDriftwoodTexas. BarbequeThe Salt Lick Barbeque BBQNot for VegetariansSo we leave Austin, Texas, not long ago, heading southwest from the original Whole Foods navel of the universe, and the wonderfully cool and independent Bookpeople store. Our destination: Driftwood, to the Salt Lick Barbeque. Yes, Driftwood. We decided to take our first vacation in two years to a place we'd never been, and settled on Canyon Lake between San Antonio and Austin. Terrible drought. Learned that FM roads means "Farm to Market." Anyway we naively thought that at 8 pm there wouldn't be many folks at the Salt Lick, only to discover about 500 cars in the parking lot. No matter. Didn't take long. Wayyyy too much meat. <span style="font-style:italic;">Attention most folks from India: don't go there!</span> <span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>: our server told us that 60% of customers pay an extra five bucks for "all you can eat." What is wrong with this picture? The cole slaw had a nice Asian tang because the man who started the place had a Japanese wife. Beans were wonderful too. But, as is often the case, there were mind-boggling juxtapositions, this time in the hill country of Texas. Not so far from this place is a Hindu property replicating Vaishnaivite pilgrimage to Vrindravan (Vraj), where Krishna, I believe, was a cowherder sporting with the <span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> gopis. It's just so bizarre. And somewhere around there also is the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower research / wander around place. Very nice. But it was over 90 degrees, and I couldn't walk more than 1/4 mile due to my disability. Oh well. Got a few nice photos. I must admit that for the most part, our food was tasty. But what we had belongs to a form of <span style="font-style:italic;"></span> <span style="font-style:italic;">trayf </span>that comes our way once every three years or so. <span style="font-style:italic;"></span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Mea culpa, mea culpa</span>.http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2011/11/not-for-vegetarians.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-1544169464846708466Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:41:00 +00002011-09-14T10:01:21.480-04:00GujaratIndiaIndia InkModiNanoSmart CarsThe New York TimesVarun GandhiINDIA INK, SMART CARS, AND ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Cu9wph9noB4/TnCyRNaY2JI/AAAAAAAAAI8/_fvjrt52M5c/s1600/nano.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 210px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Cu9wph9noB4/TnCyRNaY2JI/AAAAAAAAAI8/_fvjrt52M5c/s320/nano.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652213541077833874" /></a><br />"India Ink": a clever title for a new <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Times</span> online blog perhaps a week old at the time of this writing, but which doesn't yet appear to have received the attention it deserves. Even for college graduates, I think, the "Incredible India" marketed to tourists is more often than not "Incredibly Incomprehensible India." For anyone with a heart and half a brain, the atrocities that accompanied Partition in 1947, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, and Gujarat riots of 2002 are beyond incomprehensible. And lo and behold, one of <span style="font-style:italic;">the</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Times'</span> blog's first pieces was a "Newswallah" item reporting what the English-language press in India is reporting about the latest judicial developments regarding alleged state complicity in the Gujarat violence, a topic for which the "comments" section received a mere three posts. One was from a well-wisher encouraging the blog's editor, and another from "Guj", who compared Narendra Modi to George Wallace and the "Dixiecrats", suggesting that communal violence in India is not unlike the lynchings of pre-civil rights America. He added that Americans of that or any other time wouldn't want outsiders to come and lecture them about morals. He didn't raise the possibility of truth and reconciliation. Many Gujaratis seem to want it both ways: to forever be in the foreign public's eye as the Mahatma's homeland, despite having the worst record of communal violence since Independence of any state, yet have no truck with the calls for "Hindu-Muslim" unity that got him assassinated. Perhaps they and their Nano Smart Cars will, as Indians say, "give the fillip" to those who think they can out-develop them. They have vast diaspora resources of creativity and <span style="font-weight:bold;">paise</span> to tap, but as the "Guj" poster wrote, they are known to be conservative (read: tee-totaling, vegetarian, marriage-arranging, upholder of religious rather than secular values) but for many it also means being anti the 20% of the population who are not classified as "Hindu"(unless, like Tata, they are billionaires and tell foreign investors they are "stupid" if they are not investing in Gujarat). I love the Gujaratis with whom I am acquainted, but I am a hater of haters, no matter who they are, even when this paradoxical statement includes myself. America has changed in my lifetime (though recent developments among Republicans remind me how downright stupid and scapegoatingly-racist so many people can be). It remains difficult to discern a vast flowering of seeds for the flowering of MLK style brotherhood in India. I won't hold my breath for Anna Hazare, already lauded as a reappeared Gandhi, to fast for that cause. Pervasive casteism and class and religiously-based "vote bank politics" remain the order of the day. I recently listened to an interview with Varun Gandhi, who has audaciously hitched his star to that of the BJP, and hopes to attract the educated, supposedly rising, and well-intentioned middle class of his younger demographic. I'll take a wait and see attitude, just an outside observer on the sidelines. Oh---the third comment post to <span style="font-style:italic;">the Times</span> was my own, which I reproduce below:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />September 13th, 2011<br />Gujarat 2002 tops the list of floodgate-opening topics that I referred to when congratulating the Times for launching "India Ink". Most Gujaratis, whether in India or abroad, just want all mention of the 2002 pogroms to go away. They are disturbing reminders of: Pakistan's very existence (problematic in its own right), the atrocities of Partition and later anti-Sikh violence, the supposed weakness and peril of Hindus in their own Holy Land, the absence of true civil society (at its worst, police "without orders" to protect citizens of a certain type), ongoing Kashmir insecurity, etc. Couple these with a political culture of callous caste and class-based "vote-bank" politics, half the kids not in school, farmer suicides, environmental degradation, women's issues, the slums and decrepitude blighting urban landscapes, etc. and what you get is Modi as "Mahatmamodiji", leading "Shining Gujarat" forward, not into the past. Allegations of complicity in the 2002 atrocities become irrelevant. He is the pro-globalization, freely-elected Chief Minister they hope to see as future PM of India. Some of the most retrograde and most modernizing forces alike converge upon him. Distressing news, whether in English or any other of India's languages, upset India's rising middle class and world-class entrepreneurs, and divert the world's attention from the "vibrant" economic developments that have turned parts of Gujarat into a showcase of what a better-managed India can and should be. Gandhi as the apostle of a land of non-violence has been old news for a very long time. His latest "reappearance" in the form of the fasting, anti-corruption leader Anna Hazare is a dagger that the BJP, inconvenienced by investigations of itself, wishes to plunge even further into the heart of Congress rule. Is it little wonder that Varun Gandhi, a maverick scion of India's ruling dynasty whose age-demographic reflects most of the population, has thrown his hat into the BJP ring?</span>http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2011/09/india-ink-smart-cars-and-elephants-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-8718446219431747456Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:38:00 +00002011-08-17T13:58:38.594-04:00Shammi KapoorRIP, SHAMMI KAPOOR<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1dsqxKRWuLo/TkwBGBUJQCI/AAAAAAAAAIs/MShAt84pTwU/s1600/MICHAEL.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 235px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1dsqxKRWuLo/TkwBGBUJQCI/AAAAAAAAAIs/MShAt84pTwU/s320/MICHAEL.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641885636132159522" /></a>
<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IEHjR8nCUQo/TkwBGbtBiTI/AAAAAAAAAI0/DFOJ_cVuVFc/s1600/Shammi-Kapoor-Died-Images.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 233px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IEHjR8nCUQo/TkwBGbtBiTI/AAAAAAAAAI0/DFOJ_cVuVFc/s320/Shammi-Kapoor-Died-Images.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641885643215833394" /></a>
<br />I had never heard of this Indian actor, nor of his family ("the Barrymores" of India) until 2006. Several people in India told me that I resembled him: not the young, dashing Bollywood heartthrob, but the Shammi Kapoor of his elder years. I read up on him a bit, and learned that his life deeds show that he genuinely understood the meaning of <span style="font-style:italic;">seva</span>, or "service to others." So, one more of the world's short supply of better people is gone, funeral on India's Day of Independence. I hope that he too will now be free --- of <span style="font-style:italic;">maya</span>http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2011/08/rip-shammi-kapoor.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-7496727467481779561Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:29:00 +00002011-02-07T19:50:25.375-05:00Arab revolutionEgypt corn flakesegypt exportEgypt Foodegypt food deficitEgypt PoorEgypt PovertyFood and Globalizationfood and justiceBeing Poor in Egypt<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/TVCPmFLNbNI/AAAAAAAAAIg/iyRlNgfn-ww/s1600/img072.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/TVCPmFLNbNI/AAAAAAAAAIg/iyRlNgfn-ww/s400/img072.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571110623444298962" /></a><br />This photo of a girl, standing in a field of corn, was taken by me as I sailed down the Nile on a tour boat in the summer of 1976. I can still smell and taste the wonderful corn on the cob, grilled in the husk, that was a common street food in Cairo. The British turned the Delta in a region for cash-crop long-staple cotton production. As Egypt's population boomed, the country was forced to import cereal grains. Food riots in the 70's followed the government's requirements to toe the line of the IMF and decrease the subsidy on bread. In the 80s, I recall reading an article in which Egyptians expressed their dissatisfaction with a government proposal to add corn flour to the mix for making daily bread. Which brings me to the topic of the post preceding this one, about my astonishment to discover a box of Corn Flakes, made in Egypt, in one of those "Dollar Stores" that proliferate throughout the U.S. Many years ago, a Russian-American sociologist, Ptirim Sorokin, opined that World War I was all about "boire et manger." I think he was on to something! Please check out my other posts about food, whether on shelves in Indo-Pak groceries, or Israeli and Arab products<br />"coexisting" on the shelves of local ethnic markets. If we all ate together, and limited Americanization to Corn Flakes, we would all get along much better, I am sure of it! But no corn to export out of Egypt, please!http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2011/02/being-poor-in-cairo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-8468321624882678011Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:11:00 +00002011-02-07T19:28:21.917-05:00EgyptEgypt corn flakesegypt exportEgypt Foodegypt food deficitEgypt PoorEgypt PovertyThe Egyptian Corn Flakes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/TVCN3Q8U1CI/AAAAAAAAAIU/XAVTutlb8Gg/s1600/img038.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 348px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/TVCN3Q8U1CI/AAAAAAAAAIU/XAVTutlb8Gg/s400/img038.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571108719637615650" /></a><br />UPDATED 2-4-11: WHAT GREATER EVIDENCE IS NEEDED OF EGYPT'S MIND-BOGGLING POVERTY AND DESPERATION? WHAT KIND OF GOVERNMENT EXPORTS FOOD IN A COUNTRY WHERE NEARLY HALF THE PEOPLE LIVE ON THE EQUIVALENT OF TWO DOLLARS A DAY? WHO PROFITED FROM THIS? In 2009, for this blog, and as promised, I searched my vast archives of global flotsam and jetsam for this strange artifact of New World Corn in an Old World context making its way back to the New World in a most unusual transformation, which lends itself to discussion from any number of angles. But I am too tired to do that, so all I will say is: I believe that Egypt's average per capita income is about $700 annually. So why corn grown there ends up in a low-rent "Global Foods" box that is actually shipped back to the U.S. and sold in those (usually) Chinese-owned "Dollar Stores" boggles my mind. Which is plenty boggled as it is.http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2011/02/egyptian-corn-flakes-ii.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-3494192447618839251Wed, 19 Jan 2011 03:48:00 +00002011-01-18T23:07:51.525-05:00ChinadoppelgangerEmmanuel ChabrierlookalikesLuciano PavarottiNessun Dormaseparated at birthShammi KapoorShanghai BundThe Forbidden CityThe Three TenorsLuciano Pavarotti, Shammi Kapoor, Emmaneul Chabrier and Me: Part 2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/TTZjkMCIq5I/AAAAAAAAAII/p0RG5EgpnP8/s1600/MICHAEL.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 294px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/TTZjkMCIq5I/AAAAAAAAAII/p0RG5EgpnP8/s400/MICHAEL.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5563743863019449234" /></a><br />It was the summer of 2001, and I was enjoying six weeks in the company of other teachers on a study-tour of China. It didn't take long for me to notice a series of peculiar events. Wherever we went, there were always more Chinese tourists than non-Chinese, and time and again I was either stared at or asked to pose with an individual or with an entire family for a picture. At first, I thought, well, they are not used to seeing foreigners, so they want their picture taken with one. After all, I have a beard, in addition to being a bit overweight. But this could not have been the case when, on Beijing's most upscale shopping street, I was snapped by several upscale Chinese, while on my way to the main branch of the Chinese Foreign Language Bookstore. It just kept happening. I won't exaggerate, but it happened at least twenty times. OK, on one of my final days in China, while walking along the marvelous Bund in Shanghai, a companion told me that "The Three Tenors" performance in The Forbidden City, which had occured not long before, was playing virtually non-stop on Chinese CCTV throughout the country that entire summer. That program, along with movies portraying Mao at Yenan, The Long March, and the 80th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. So it finally hit me. <span style="font-weight:bold;">The people who wanted their pictures taken with me thought that I was/am Luciano Pavarotti.<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> I DID once "go as" Luciano Pavarotti to a Halloween party, years ago. I suppose that it would not have occurred to many of them that the great tenor had left the country, nor that he would not just be walking around the tourist spots of China like any regular person. It amuses me now to think that in at least a few Chinese homes, there are framed portraits of family members atop lace doilies, with their arms around me, smiling and making the "V" for victory sign, along with Luciano Pavarotti. <span style="font-style:italic;">Nessun dorma</span>, indeed!http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2011/01/luciano-pavarotti-shammi-kapoor.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-8129099680296717418Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:39:00 +00002011-01-18T23:05:36.475-05:00doppelgangerEmmanuel ChabrierlookalikesLuciano Pavarottipiano lessonsseparated at birthShammi KapoorLuciano Pavarotti, Shammi Kapoor, Emmaneul Chabrier and Me: Part 1<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/TTZXzGqrUvI/AAAAAAAAAIA/Wqz0uWXQmco/s1600/MICHAEL.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 294px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/TTZXzGqrUvI/AAAAAAAAAIA/Wqz0uWXQmco/s400/MICHAEL.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5563730925137384178" /></a><br />Well, I always thought that I had a previous life, and often wondered why I didn't continue piano lessons when I was younger. I really loved playing, and my teachers suggested that I had some talent. I now understand that it was the ghost of the French composer, Emmanuel Chabrier, laying his hand upon me because "I" had already contributed mightily to the world of great music. This present realization has its roots in India, land of mysteries, where one is routinely advised to "expect the unexpected". In 2006, many people there told me that I resembled Bollywood star Shammi Kapoor, not in his younger years as an older man. A simple image search will show how we look somewhat alike. I am sad to learn that this member of the "Barrymores of Bollywood" clan is in failing health, and can only wish him my best, unknown and from afar. In fact, my "other world" <span style="font-style: italic;">doppleganger</span> is not Shammi Kapoor at all, whose <span style="font-style: italic;">seva</span> I much admire. Rather, it is none other than Emmanuel Chabrier, the composer of "Spanish Rhapsody", the video/audio and likeness of myself may be enjoyed through a simple web searching. I include a photo of myself for purposes of comparison. Well, my search is now over. Enjoy the composition of my decomposition which, alas, I cannot replicate in this present incarnation. As for Luciano, more to come in my next post.<br /><br />http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2011/01/goodbye-shammi-hello-emmanuel.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-3585181993847022948Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:09:00 +00002011-01-18T22:47:54.345-05:00ChinaglobalizationMother IndiaPearl BuckThe Good EarthWhen China Awakens,The World Will TrembleCouldn't help but recall this quote, attributed to Napoleon, while recently viewing portions of the 1937 film version of Pearl Buck's <span style="font-style:italic;">The Good Earth</span>. While there is both much justifiable praise and criticism of this work, I was struck by the following text appearing at the beginning of the film, which of course is speaking to the imminent role of China as an ally in the struggle against Japan:<br /><br /> THE SOUL OF A GREAT NATION <br /> IS EXPRESSED IN THE LIFE OF<br /> ITS HUMBLEST PEOPLE. IN THIS <br />SIMPLE STORY OF A CHINESE FARMER<br /> MAY BE FOUND SOMETHING OF THE<br />SOUL OF CHINA. ITS HUMILITY, ITS<br /> COURAGE, ITS DEEP HERITAGE FROM<br />THE PAST AND ITS VAST PROMISE<br /> FOR THE FUTURE.<br /><br />At the time, of course, neither Chinese Nationalists nor Communists could imagine the "vast promise for the future" that China would eventually take post-1979, and its enormous force in the current global economy. It also occurred to me that the film "Mother India", twenty years later, borrowed heavily from visual representations of suffering peasantry as portrayed in <span style="font-style:italic;">The Good Earth</span>. Well, as for China's future, imagined circa 1937, or even as peasants starved there in the late 50's, "who'da thunk it"?<br /><br />当中国觉醒时，世界都发颤<br /><br />我想起这句话，据说拿破仑波拿巴说了，而最近观看由美国作家赛珍珠的赛珍珠1937年电影版的部分。这两种批评和赞美的书和电影是合理的。下面的文字出现在电影的开始。它指的是将发挥作用，中国作为一个在抗日斗争中的盟友：<br />一个伟大民族的灵魂体现在了其最卑微的人的生活。在这一波我国农民简单的故事可能会发现作者对中国灵魂东西。智能谦逊，勇气，它从过去和对未来的广阔前景深厚资源。<br />当时既没有中国国民党，也不共产党人可以想像未来“是中国将最终实现”广阔的前景，在当前全球经济中的地位。电影“印度母亲”，20年后，借用农民如何在苦难的大地描绘严重。 1937年，谁能够想到什么中国和美国今天这样呢？http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-china-awakens-world-will-tremble.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-122184590139525754Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:24:00 +00002012-08-16T17:43:24.989-04:00AkkermanBelgorod-DniestrovskyBil'horodHolocaustOdeska OblastRed ArmyRussian JewsShaboShoahSoviet JewsWorld War IIYad VashemONE BY ONE -- AUNT ROSA OF SHABO~AKKERMAN<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SxFvdhYfzFI/AAAAAAAAAG4/tr1N0zCgotQ/s1600/ZAKS+FOR+BLOG.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409227180416683090" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SxFvdhYfzFI/AAAAAAAAAG4/tr1N0zCgotQ/s320/ZAKS+FOR+BLOG.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 202px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 320px;" /></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">(PHOTOS: Rosa as a young woman, Rosa in the Red Army during the war, my mother, born in USA 1917)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Having spoken at length of his memories of growing to adulthood in the former Soviet Union, a great-uncle of mine on my mother's side informed me in the 1980s that many relatives were among "the lost" and killed, one way or another, in Europe during World War II. Some were shot into pits by </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Einsatzgruppen </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">and fascist collaborators</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">, </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">some lost their lives in "German bombings" or in the Odessa catacombs to which they fled as Nazi air support aided Rumanian and Ukrainian collaborators in wiping out the Jewish presence of southern Bessarabia. He and his brother, my mother's father, were among the few who emigrated either just before or after the Russian Revolution. My mother's Aunt Rosa (whom she had never met) was a nurse in the Red Army Medical Corps and died under unknown circumstances as it made its way through Hungary in March/April 1945. One of my mother's sisters had photographs of Rosa and her siblings, copies of which came into my possession. &nbsp;Included were pictures of Rosa, one of her as a young woman, another of her in Red Army uniform. Her resemblance to my mother astonished me. I </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">only </span>recently</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">discovered that testimony of Rosa's death was submitted to Yad Vashem by someone whom my great-uncle had mentioned was a relative. I post this in memory of one of the many killed during World War II, without a grave to memorialize her.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">לאחר דיבר באריכות על זיכרונותיו של גידול לבגרות של ברית המועצות לשעבר, דוד רבא שלי מצד אמא שלי הודיע ​​לי בשנת 1980, כי קרובי משפחה רבים היו בין "אבודים" ונהרג, בדרך זו או אחרת, אירופה בזמן מלחמת העולם השנייה. כמה נורו לתוך בורות ידי האיינזצגרופן ומשתפי הפעולה פשיסטיות, חלקם איבדו את חייהם "ההפצצות הגרמניות" או את הקטקומבות אודסה שאליו הם ברחו כמו סיוע אווירי הנאצי סייעה הרומני ומשתפי הפעולה האוקראינים לחסל את הנוכחות היהודית בסרביה בדרום. הוא ואחיו, אביו של אמי, היו בין הבודדים שהיגרו או לפני או אחרי המהפכה הרוסית. דודה של אמא שלי רוזה (שאותו מעולם לא פגש) היתה אחות בצבא האדום חיל הרפואה ומת בנסיבות לא ידועות כפי שהוא עשה את דרכו דרך הונגריה מרץ / אפריל 1945. אחת האחיות של אמא שלי היו תמונות של רוזה, אחיה ואחיותיה, עותקים של אשר בא לידי שלי. כלל היו תמונות של רוזה, אחת כאישה צעירה, עוד אחד שלה במדי הצבא האדום. דמיונה אמי הדהימה אותי. גיליתי רק לאחרונה, כי עדותו של מותה של רוזה הוגשה ליד ושם על ידי מישהו מהם דודי הזכיר היה קרוב משפחה. אני שולח את זה לזכרו של אחד מני רבים נהרגו במהלך מלחמת העולם השנייה, ללא קבר להנציח אותה.</span><br /><div><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Сказав при длине его воспоминания о растущей во взрослую жизнь в бывшем Советском Союзе, двоюродный дед мой по материнской линии сообщил мне в 1980-х годов, что многие родственники были среди «потерянных» и убили, так или иначе, в Европе во время Второй мировой войны. Некоторые из них были расстреляны в ямы на СД и фашистских коллаборационистов, некоторые потеряли свои жизни в «немецкой бомбардировки" или в одесские катакомбы, к которой они бежали, как нацистский поддержку с воздуха помогали румынских и украинских коллаборационистов в ликвидации еврейского присутствия в южной Бессарабии. Он и его брат, отец моей матери, были среди тех немногих, кто эмигрировал непосредственно перед или после русской революции. Тетя моей мамы Розы (которого она никогда не встречал) была сестрой милосердия в Красной Армии медицинский корпус и умер при невыясненных обстоятельствах, как это сделал свой путь через Венгрию в марте / апреле 1945 года. Одна из сестер моей матери были фотографии Роза и ее братья и сестры, копии вступившего в моем распоряжении. Среди них были фотографии Роза, одна из ее как молодая женщина, другой ее в форме Красной Армии. Ее сходство с мамой, меня поразило. Я только недавно узнал, что свидетельство о смерти Розы был представлен на Яд ва-Шем, кого мой двоюродный дядя упомянул о том, родственник. Я этот пост в память об одном из многих погибших во время Второй мировой войны, без серьезной, чтобы увековечить ее.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2009/11/shoah-one-by-one-aunt-rosa-of-shabo-aka.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-1250921944845050180Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:25:00 +00002011-01-18T22:34:43.207-05:00ConfuciusFulbrightGandhihaircutKolkata five-star hotelOberoi Grand Hotel CalcuttarainShahrukh Khan Newark Airportswimmingswimming poolsSWIMMING in the Rain, a.k.a, A Haircut in Calcutta and What It Feels Like to Be "High-Class"As I sit at home waiting for it to rain after several days of almost monsoon-like heat and humidity, and following my last post about ice-skating on the Eiffel Tower, I am reminded of a two-part tale that may, upon reflection, be quite trivial but also somewhat instructive. Anyway it is the summer of '06. As an American teacher, I was privileged (thank you, fellow taxpayers and Uncle Sam), along with 14 peers drawn from across the U.S. to spend 6 weeks in India. Our last week was spent partly in Kolkata (Calcutta), by which time my beard was out of control (but alas, not so much the hair on my head). I had heard it said while in China '01 that India Fulbright awardees are put up mainly in five-star hotels (true, and in one case, even a six-star!), which just knock the socks out of we middle-class Americans who think it perfectly fine to stay at a budget local hotel or motel chain, thank you very much. We awardees were also given, to my complete surprise, an extremely generous stipend for books and whatever. I suspect that one colleague gave most of it away to the needy, randomly, in appropriate acts of selflessness. Think "Slumdog". <span style="font-weight: bold;">Part I</span>: In any case, by the time we were in Calcutta I needed a beard trim and haircut badly, but was informed by reception that the ladies who work in the "saloon" were incapable of dealing with a man's beard (yes, <span style="font-style: italic;">saloon</span>, not the American-French pronounced "salon", and it is <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> incorrect) . "We will find you a proper shop and arrange for a taxicab" (of course, I wasn't expected to just go find some "untouchable"<span style="font-style: italic;"> dalit</span> somewhere and sit on the curb while he gave me a haircut, was I?) OK. Well, I was given the address, the cab ride was not far at all, but the shop (which I would in fact not have found on my own) was about a block away from the mildly intimidating sandbags, Indian sharpshooter units, watchtower, high security walls, and anti-bomb structures of various kinds designed to protect both the British and America consulates, both located, as it turns out, on the pedestrian-only Ho Chi Minh St. Ah, leave it to Bengalis to make "Gogol" a "Namesake" (even if only in fiction) and, deliberately or not, to require American government officials to be daily reminded of Ho Chi Minh. Is there an "Adolf Hitler Street" in Ahmdavad? Not yet, I don't think. But I digress. The point is, vehicle traffic was not allowed so that I could be taken directly to the barbershop, and the taxi driver offered, after parking the cab in a no-parking zone (of course, and why not? it is a legitimate form of resistance to the powers that be), to walk me to the shop and wait for nearly an hour back in the cab until I was done. When I walked into the shop and noticed about a dozen people crowded into a small space, I assumed I would have to wait my turn, but no, they were mostly employees. For me, there was: one person to cut the meager hair on my head, another to cut my beard, another to trim my eyebrows and nose hairs, and a fourth to provide a head massage. I paid for everything and tipped everyone generously, walked back to the cab waiting for the explosion that happily did not occur, and was driven back to the hotel. The cost for this entire "operation" was less than what I spend for a haircut and beard trim at home! When I gave the cab driver the amount shown on the meter plus a tip (a total of about $5), the look of joy on his face was one that I will never forget. I suspected that his family would eat better than usual that evening, and returned to my hotel room. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Part II</span>: Well, if you're a male like me you may also know how irritating it is to have all the scratchy little hairs left on your neck and back after a haircut: no matter how few or microscopic, I feel them! I have been swimming almost daily since 1982, and after a quick shower, I headed straight to the courtyard pool of our exclusive hotel. It was about 5 or 6 pm. and I was <span style="font-weight: bold;">the only guest present in the area</span>. I am reclining comfortably in the second chair from the left, in the photo, and after a decent interval following my poolside sandwich, Kingfisher beer, and Cuban cigar, it was time to swim my 30 laps. Or, I should say, swim my laps as well I could in a kidney-shaped pool. After about lap 10 or so, the skies opened. It is the monsoon. Torrential rain, thunder, and lightning --- the kind I would like right now to break the heat and allow Mother Nature, rather than myself, to water the lawn and shrubbery. Now, where I come from, they close even indoor pools when that happens, in strict observance of Red Cross rules. A hotel staff person came rushing out, thick and fluffy Turkish towel, bathrobe, and umbrella-ready, to escort me out. "Sir, sir, don't you wish to leave the pool?" Well, I'm thinking (yes, maybe I am crazy): "Wow, this is the greatest swim I have ever had, in torrential rain." The <span style="font-style: italic;">last thing</span> I want is to get out of the pool! As it turned out, it wasn't a question of hotel policy or safety rules, it was simply assumed that I would want to leave. Well, I didn't. And I like to think that to this day, perhaps partly because I actually conversed with this guy about <span style="font-style: italic;">his</span> life and also gave him a good tip, the man whose job it was to "serve" me remembers the crazy American who wanted to swim in the rain. So what are the lessons here? It was very awkward being treated with such deference by a serving class, as I am not a Prime Minister, Indian VVIP (yes, that's two "V's", as in Shahrukh Khan at Newark Airport last week), jet-setter, or descendant of British artistocracy. God forbid you should walk out of the hotel elevator rolling your own suitcase. In New Delhi, we didn't even have to tell the elevator operator what floor we wanted. It was his job to know, so that we had to do as little as possible. But you can pee on your own in the toilet. Didn't Gandhiji try to put an end to all this? Yes, but he didn't get the India he wanted. And neither did most Indians. And indeed, there is the Hindu custom of treating the guest "like God" which is a lot different from the new China's resurrection of Confucius' "how wonderful it is to have guests from afar." I, on the other hand, flew back from India to my little piece of the American dream, toting these and many other memories of teacherly "compare and contrast" that will stay with me always.http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2009/08/swimming-in-rain-aka-haircut-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-6687235730405362139Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:36:00 +00002011-01-18T23:11:36.728-05:00decisive momentEiffel TowerHenri Cartier-Bressonice skating eiffel towerice-skatingpatinoire de la tour eiffeltour eiffeltour eiffel patinoireIce Skating ON the Eiffel Tower: A Decisive Family Moment<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SooU1IPIOYI/AAAAAAAAAGo/xmPbKmF-q-E/s1600-h/img275.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 229px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SooU1IPIOYI/AAAAAAAAAGo/xmPbKmF-q-E/s320/img275.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371128408569297282" border="0" /></a><br /> Not exactly a Henri Cartier-Bresson decisive moment, but a family story: in January of 1970, as a young man full of wanderlust and slowly wending my way from the Scottish highlands through England and into France, I spent several near-penniless days in Paris. I took the elevator to the "second floor" of the Eiffel Tower, and as the old iron gate opened, there was the utterly unexpected sight of schoolchildren, perhaps 6-8 of them, ice-skating. I took a photograph of the scene. In 1985, as my wife and I were walking toward the Eiffel Tower, I told her about this remarkable event. She refused to believe it. Her French is good, so I asked the lady selling entrance tickets "is there still an ice-skating rink on the second floor?" She looked up haughtily, her eyeglasses at the tip of her nose, and replied: "yes, sir, indeed, and on the third floor there is a swimming pool." Of course, she thought I was nuts. Needless to say, this didn't help my case. When we got home I tore the house apart looking for the black and white negatives from 1970, and I found them! I sent them off to have a print made, and showed it to my wife. Over the years she forgot that I showed her the photographic proof, and I can no longer find the negative or the print! So for years the "truth" in the family has been that I could not possibly have ever seen kids ice-skating on the Eiffel Tower. Fast forward to a few years ago, when I mentioned to French teachers in my school about the ice-skating rink on the Eiffel tower, and that's when I learned how to say "ice-skating rink" in French, and I told them that no one believes that I saw what I saw. They suggested "googling" for info, and lo and behold, the result was a newspaper article from about 2004 stating that "for the first time ever, authorities will allow ice-skaing on the Eiffel tower." Well, of course they are mistaken, very mistaken. While cleaning the basement recently, I found the contact sheet of the photo (though the negative and print remain elusive), so I scanned the tiny image at high resolution, improved it as best as I could in Photoshop, and submit it here for anyone who cares! You may click to enlarge; in any case the iron structure of the tower is visible upper-right. Now, if that wasn't in the photo...UPDATE 1/17-11 I have found the original negative! Will scan it when I get a chance, to replace the existing poor image.<br /><br /> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>371</o:Words> <o:characters>2119</o:Characters> <o:company>laobaixing2</o:Company> <o:lines>17</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>4</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>2602</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:.5in 1.0in .5in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;">Patin à glace sur la Tour Eiffel: Une famille "moment decisive"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;">Pas exactement un Henri Cartier-Bresson moment décisif, mais une histoire (blague) de famille: en Janvier de 1970, comme un jeune homme plein de nostalgie du voyage et lentement, se frayant mon chemin de la Scottish Highlands à travers l'Angleterre et en France, j'ai passé plusieurs jours à proximité sans le sou en Paris. J'ai pris l'ascenseur à l'étage "deuxième" de la Tour Eiffel, et comme la vieille porte de fer a ouvert, il y avait la vue tout à fait inattendue d'écoliers, peut-être 6-8 sur eux, patin à glace. J'ai pris une photographie de la scène. En 1985, comme ma femme et moi marchions vers la Tour Eiffel, je lui ai parlé de cet événement remarquable. Elle a refusé de le croire. Son français est bon, alors j'ai demandé à la dame de vente de billets d'entrée "est là encore une patinoire au deuxième étage? Elle leva les yeux avec hauteur, ses lunettes au bout de son nez, et a répondu: "oui, monsieur, en effet, et au troisième étage, il ya une piscine." Bien sûr, elle pensait que j'étais fou. Inutile de dire que cela ne vous aide pas mon cas. Lorsque nous sommes rentrés, j'ai déchiré la maison regardant de côté pour les négatifs noir et blanc à partir de 1970, et je les ai trouvés! Je leur ai envoyé pour avoir une impression faite, et l'a montré à ma femme. Au fil des ans, elle a oublié que je lui ai montré la preuve photographique, et je ne trouve plus le négatif ou l'imprimer! Aussi pendant la «vérité» dans la famille a été que je ne pouvait pas avoir jamais vu des enfants patiner sur la Tour Eiffel. Fast Forward à il ya quelques années, lorsque j'ai dit au personnel enseignant le français dans mon école sur la patinoire sur la tour Eiffel, et c'est là que j'ai appris à dire «patinoire», en français, et je leur ai dit que Personne ne croit que j'ai vu ce que j'ai vu. Ils ont suggéré "googler" pour info, et voilà, le résultat fut un article de journal d'environ 2004 indiquant que «pour la première fois, les autorités permettra de glace skaing sur la Tour Eiffel." Eh bien, bien sûr, ils se trompent, très erronée. Pendant le nettoyage du sous-sol récemment, j'ai trouvé la planche contact de la photo (bien que le négatif et imprimer demeurent hors de portée), alors j'ai scanné la petite image à haute résolution, elle a amélioré du mieux que je pouvais dans Photoshop, et de le soumettre ici pour quiconque who cares! Vous mai click to enlarge, en tout cas, la structure de fer de la tour est visible en haut à droite. Alors, si ce n'était pas dans la photo ...</span></p> <!--EndFragment--><br /><span id="result_box" class="long_text"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" title="Ice Skating ON the Eiffel Tower: A Decisive Family Moment" onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#ebeff9'" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor='#fff'"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" title="Not exactly a Henri Cartier-Bresson decisive moment, but a family story: in January of 1970, as a young man full of wanderlust and slowly wending my way from the Scottish highlands through England and into France, I spent several near-penniless days in" onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#ebeff9'" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor='#fff'" ></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" title="Now, if that wasn't in the photo..." onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#ebeff9'" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor='#fff'" ><br /></span></span>http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2009/08/ice-skating-on-eiffel-tower-decisive_17.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-3034600364510326310Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:39:00 +00002009-06-30T08:33:22.709-04:00Gujaratleaving western civmeaning of clothingNavaratriWilliam McNeillWorld HistoryWorld History AssociationWorld History Association Conference in Salem: William McNeill, Leaving Western Civ Behind, and Why World Historians Need to be AnthropologistsMy presentation "East Side Story: Indian-Americans and the Dance at the Gym" is a work in progress, with further field research and writing needed prior to submission for peer-review publication. However, William McNeill's lecture on "Leaving Western Civilization Behind", and Jerry Bentley's comments afterwards, stimulated the following remarks which I made at Sunday's Panel on "Commodities, Culture, and Globalization," prior to discussing Gujarati NRIs and the viewing of my powerpoint presentation:<br />Professor William McNeill told us the other evening of the profound effect that anthropological concepts of culture had on his thinking as he struggled over the years with formulating paradigms for comprehending the world. And as he reminded us in his humorous reference to himself as John the Baptist heralding the appearance of the appropriately named David Christian, there would be no world without the Big Bang, and hence, no prehistory or world history at all. I would like to take that statement as an opportunity to remind ourselves (though we don’t really need it) that there would be no humans to situate in the larger universal and planetary contexts without human reproduction over the many thousands of generations that witnessed the eventual spread of humanity to all points of the globe, where, in each place human groups adapted to the conditions of local environments and created forms of social organization in order to survive and, as cultural anthropologists are wont to say, “ get the business of daily life done.” But, as anthropologists also tell us, humans don’t simply “work”. One can consider this from a religious perspective (“man does not live for bread alone”) or a sociological one. It was Durkheim who first pointed to some of the mechanisms by which societies cohere and function or fall apart. He also stated that we turn our obligations into virtues, suppressing our individual desires for the good of the larger community, and, in so doing, contribute not merely to the endless course of human reproduction, but also the to reproduction of society and culture. Jerry Bentley reminded us, in his remarks following Professor McNeill’s talk, of the dictum that we make history but not under circumstances of our own choosing. However, as anthropologist Clifford Geertz famously wrote, we <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">do</span> choose to entangle ourselves in webs of meaning that we ourselves spin. And the aspect of this human web to which I wish to call attention today is the very one that Professor McNeill identified as having the most impact on his thinking over the years. <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">It is the web of shared assumptions, of common understandings, of beliefs, values, and other cultural means that define for people in any society who they are and what they stand for in the world. </span> The inherent problem faced by any social order is this: how to reproduce itself over time? My work on Indian-American Gujaratis is very much a work in progress, but I am looking at them not just from above, as it were, across large amounts of time and space, but also, as a cultural anthropologist would, from the ground up. There are certain generalizations that are manifestly universal according to the ethnographic records of all the ways that humans have been and are human. When we are dealing with the globalization of the past, such as, say, the Indian Ocean World of one thousand or more years ago, it is one thing to learn, from written records, about the goods brought by caravans to port cities, and the vessels that carried the goods and where they traveled to, what they carried back, who did the transporting, who received the goods, and so on. We can also trace the trajectories of the big ideas, religion and language, using such records. But it is something else altogether to learn about common understandings, the shared ideas and assumptions, the networks of social bonding and social capital that made these exchanges possible and that constituted <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">the very stuff of meaningful everyday life. </span> Unless we have a corpus of such rich and accidentally discovered materials as the Cairo Geniza, it is very difficult to give names and put faces on the ordinary people who were the agents and beneficiaries of all this activity, and <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">to understand what “goods”, in a semantically broader sense, meant to them and to their sense of social and cultural identity.</span> Indeed, if we are concerned with trade diasporas, as I am in this present ongoing work, the inherent problem of social reproduction is compounded by the fact that one is living as a religious and racial minority among strangers. The local community that I am studying consists of Indian-American immigrants and their descendants who originated in India’s western state of Gujarat, long known as exporters of valued textiles from Egypt to Indonesia, and otherwise as traders and entrepreneurs overseas. The people about whom I am writing have been known to me for over 20 years, but I only began to learn significant things about them some three years ago, after a Fulbright experience in India.<br />Let me start, then, at 20 or so years ago. Imagine a “multicultural day” at a suburban, mostly white, middle-class small town-high school. A Hindu girl whose parents came from Gujarat is sharing with her peers some of the textiles that are indeed among the more visually spectacular and beautiful possessions that define group identity, and she showed with pride the saree that her mother was married in, and told fellow students that her mother’s marriage had been arranged. She spoke of how the garment has such and such a design and is worn in such and such a way, and she also showed some of her mother’s bangles and gold ornaments. During the Q &amp; A period, she was asked about her own ideas concerning marriage and without hesitation, and in a decidedly American way, made it clear that she didn’t intend to have anyone other than herself choose her life partner. All of this struck me at the time as of great sociological and ethnographic interest, but I didn’t really give any of it a second thought until several years later, when another female student, also of Gujarati origin and enrolled in my anthropology class, said to me : “Oh, you really must come to our <span style="font-style: italic;">garbas</span>.” I had no idea what that meant, did not, in the event, attend any, and came away with only a superficial understanding of <span style="font-style: italic;">garba</span> as a dance party of some kind. I didn’t get in touch with that person again until many years later, after having been in Gujarat myself, where, among other things, I visited the original Swaminarayan temple in Ahmedabad/Amdavad, and traveled to the town of Patan, not far from the border with Rajasthan, where I saw the most famous textiles of Gujarat being produced by male weavers belonging to one of the only two or three caste families that still produce the <span style="font-style: italic;">patolu</span>, a double-sided silk ikat tie-dye saree or pattern for other garments, prized and priceless examples of which can be admired hanging adjacent to the Ardebil carpet in London’s Victoria &amp; Albert Museum while you are waiting for the dim light to be turned on the carpet (which I think they do every half hour or so for one minute, can't recall exactly, but what is of most interest is that Patan <span style="font-style: italic;">patolus</span><br />are there, rather than in some other gallery.<br />When I returned home after six weeks of travel throughout India my mind was full of new ideas and learning and I turned my attention back to the students of Gujarati origin, and wanted to know more. Did their stories constitute just another chapter in the history of American immigration and multiculturalism, or was there something more to it, given what I learned was their relative insularity, and, for the most part, highly conservative way of life? It didn’t take long to figure out how it came to pass that 50-100 families from Surat and other sites in Gujarat were living either in town or nearby: immigration laws were liberalized in 1965, around the same time that the federal interstate highway system turned what once were major arteries all across the U.S. into secondary roads. So joint families, some with members having earned advanced degrees in India (MBAs, Engineering, etc. ) became small-business owners especially of motels and filling stations, preferring, en masse, to work for themselves. It was a hard climb up, because of stereotypes about their race, their accents, their religion, and much else besides, but they have in recent decades created their niche. Not long ago, it occurred to me that my friend Moshe, who deals in precious stones and has contacts in Israel, Africa, Antwerp, and Mumbai, WAS or could have well been the brother of medieval Maimonides, who perished in a shipwreck on his way to India to procure diamonds. And that Dipak, the Surti father of one of my students, was or could well have been his Indian supplier. But here they both were, right in front of my eyes, agents of world history but hidden in plain sight. And so too, is the dance at the gym, organized by local Gujarati associations all over North America and elsewhere to celebrate the goddess festival of Navaratri each autumn. I now call your attention to it as a sort of document that can be read, a total social fact (as Durkheim’s nephew Marcel Mauss called such phenomena), that opens a window into not only the ethnographic present of my subjects, but also into the worlds of the past, or the imagined past, in which many of them still cognitively dwell. The dance also opens a window into the globalization of the present, in which Gujarati Hindus play prominent transnational roles in economic, political, and religious domains.http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2009/06/world-history-association-conference-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-5037411297025433332Sun, 08 Mar 2009 12:12:00 +00002009-04-10T20:29:38.212-04:00Cedar Hill CemeteryChinese-AmericansHartford historyJoseph TwitchellKatherine HepburnMark TwainQing DynastyRong HongSamuel ClemensSamuel ColtYung WingYung Wing & The Chinese Educational Mission<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SbO23SN4ULI/AAAAAAAAAFo/pJui1221y6I/s1600-h/CEDAR++HILL+YUNG+WING.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SbO23SN4ULI/AAAAAAAAAFo/pJui1221y6I/s200/CEDAR++HILL+YUNG+WING.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310789446499061938" border="0" /></a>Not terribly obscure, but also insufficiently well-known, is that Hartford, CT was the center of one of the Qing Dynasty's last (and largely failed) efforts to reform itself in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yung Wing (a.k.a. Rong Hong), educated in missionary schools and the first Chinese to receive a degree from Yale, directed the "Chinese Educational Mission" that sent young men to be educated throughout New England, in both public and private schools. They returned to China so Americanized and perhaps even converted that Qing authorities eventually decided to suspend the mission because of its anti-Confucian and potentially subversive consequences. Yung Wing, himself a convert, remained in Connecticut, married into a local white prominent family, and was neighbor to and close friends with such contemporary luminaries as Samuel Clemens and the Reverend Joseph Twichell, both of whom spoke out against the "coolie trade" that led to Chinese exclusion and widespread anti-Chinese prejudice in the U.S., particulary in the Western states. Americans of Chinese heritage could not become citizens until the U.S. was forced to defend itself against Japanese imperialism. For those who are interested and cannot see it for themselves, I offer this photo of the inscription beneath his monument in Cedar Hill Cemetery. When one considers the company he keeps in eternity there: Katherine Hepburn, Samuel Colt, and virtually no one else connected to anything other than the local Yankee elite, it is a remarkable bit of further evidence that "makes the local global".http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2009/03/yung-wing-chinese-educational-mission.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-4054452523669647829Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:56:00 +00002009-03-12T19:47:59.283-04:00BollywoodIndo-Pak GroceryNRIकोस्मो<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SbBrs16qiUI/AAAAAAAAAFY/tXDDtk9aveo/s1600-h/DSCN0132.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SbBrs16qiUI/AAAAAAAAAFY/tXDDtk9aveo/s200/DSCN0132.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309862378801367362" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SbBrhwlIPJI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/4HySPHFmJ5Y/s1600-h/DSCN0181.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SbBrhwlIPJI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/4HySPHFmJ5Y/s200/DSCN0181.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309862188390300818" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Our local Indo-Pak-Middle Eastern Grocery really is "the cosmos." It also has a section of Eastern European foods, because it was established by people who came from that part of the world. It has been in business for decades and serves the most diverse clientele of any such grocery that I have seen in our area. It is also the place for buying DVDs of recent and older Bollywood movies. These are legal discs and sell for a mere $2-3 each. No one bothers to "rent" anymore. There are many other shelves of titles other than the ones shown in the photo, and films are also available in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, etc. Evidently, the NRI market is that big, that a profit is made even when the disks are sold so cheaply. Amazing! And lucky me.</span><br /></span>http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2009/03/blog-post.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-591241817803725761Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:08:00 +00002011-01-18T21:37:07.285-05:00clothes and meaninghomespunikatIndian clothingkhadimeaning of clothingpatoluSarabhaiswadestextile historytie-diewhat do clothes mean?The Meaning of Clothing -- A More Informative Post<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SZ6-HwTcCMI/AAAAAAAAAFI/ni84KT0XkZo/s1600-h/DSC_3445.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SZ6-HwTcCMI/AAAAAAAAAFI/ni84KT0XkZo/s200/DSC_3445.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304886451523815618" border="0" /></a><br />Many who are interested in this topic may be unaware of the fine material (pun intended) that is sitting on college and university library shelves or in online academic journals. As I have STILL not yet completed the paper that I am writing (been stalled by surgeries and recoveries), and because people are interested in "the meaning of clothing" and in how "cloth communicates", I will devote this post to pointing a few fingers in a few directions. My own interest is both world historical and ethnographic, focusing on India as the "mother lode" for the production, design and diffusion of textiles. I am particularly intrigued in how the meaning and symbolism of what people wear varies according to context (ex: how members of diaspora communities maintain or reinvent "traditional" identities). I do not approach this topic from the angle of "fashion", though of course much has been written on that aspect as well. Getting to the point: if you are interested in "the meaning of clothing" the place to start is with social and cultural theory. For me, it began with the late Annette Weiner's essay on "The Anthropology of Cloth" that appeared in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Annual Review of Anthropology</span> in the late'80s or so., followed by contributions to her co-edited volume of multi-authored essays,<span style="font-style: italic;"> Cloth and the Human Experience</span>. Depending on your particular (global or temporal) area of interest, I would then head to JSTOR and Project Muse, both online archives of academic journals, which, if you work or are a student at any college or university you have free access to. Even if you are not a student or staff member, you might get limited guest privileges on the premises at a private college or university library, and as a taxpayer you are entitled to use (again, with limitations), computer terminals at any state funded library. In either case only a few computer terminals will available for guest users, your time will also probably be limited, but at least the situation is not hopeless. I doubt that small public libraries subscribe to databases of academic journals, but ones located in very large cities might, ex: New York Public Library. In the U.S., if your local state university library is "open stack" then you are in luck and can have a field day. But note that you will not find relevant books on "the meaning of clothing" in any <span style="font-style: italic;">single</span> LC or Dewey category; again, depending on your topic you will be hopping from sociology, to politics, history, folklore, anthropology, art, area studies, cultural studies, communication, and so on. In fact, art books with reproductions of European paintings or Indian temple reliefs or the Ajanta caves are wonderful sources for documenting cross-cultural influences over the course of centuries, including such surprising things as priests in Italy or England wearing vestments produced in Aleppo or Damascus, inscribed with calligraphic verses from the Qur'an. If you are looking at anything that is woven, don't leave out the so-called "Oriental rugs", which can be seen in so many Renaissance paintings and even traced back to their locus of production through close examination of tribal or urban workshop designs. Which reminds me of Amy Greenfield's <span style="font-style: italic;">A Perfect Red</span>, on the history of cochineal, and Brian Murphy's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Root of Wild Madder</span>, both very readable and informative. I refer in two recent published pieces (one on Dutch art, the other on "Big History in Little Places" --- scroll below) to the hats atop the heads of 17th century Dutch burghers made of beaver pelts that likely originated through trade with Native American tribes in southern New England, spread as a fashion statement across the English channel, surviving today as icons of the Pilgrim Thanksgiving in the U.S. If you are writing a paper for college your theoretical framework or hypotheses must be generic (even before Annette Weiner reminded scholars of this fact, it has long been a commonplace that universally, cloth and the body "communicate," especially on ritual occasions), but the subject of cloth and textiles is too vast to be comprehended on a world scale. You will have to narrow your focus to the meaning of clothing to particular people in a particular place and at a particular time and purpose. Perhaps someone is working on a comprehensive Encyclopedia of World Textiles, maybe one exists and I don't know about it yet (for example, there is a Cambridge U.P multi-authored series on the world history of food). Even for India, I have chosen to limit my topic to the west coast, to what are now the states of Gujarat and adjacent Rajasthan because they are of most interest to me. If your interest is India and you get to Amdavad/Ahmedabad consider yourself lucky when they let you into the private Sarabhai <span style="font-style: italic;">haveli</span> collection for an hour, where you get to rush past magnificent stuff in near darkness on condition that you don't radically deviate from the canned tour. I don't mean to criticize them, after all the family bankrolled Gandhiji and is now taking flak from the Gujarat state government for reasons too complicated to go into here. Delhi national museums occasionally mount world-class textile exhibitions, and the V &amp; A in London is a treasury for the imperial and colonial periods. In the U.S. there is the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. All have websites and publications. If you are in Gujarat you should go Patan where there are 2 or 3 caste/families still producing one or two saris a year called "patolu", an incredibly labor intensive work of double-sided and dyed silk ikat "tie-die". They were invited some years ago to the Smithsonian's "Silk Road" festival on the D.C. mall. Keep in mind how many of our common English words for different types of cloth / textiles are of Indian origin, and even when not (ex: paisley) can still be traced back to central Asia and the beginnings of industrial production in Europe and North America. What, after all, did high class and eventually middle-class people want most of all that came originally from "the East?" After porcelain and spices comes cloth. See Susan Bean's wonderful work <span style="font-style: italic;">Yankee India</span>, which is devoted mainly to Bengal but is so important for shedding light on a trade that is less well-known in the U.S. than the early American China trade. She also has a marvelous essay on "The Indian Origins of the Bandanna" and on the <span style="font-style: italic;">khadi</span> movement led by Gandhi during the freedom struggle. somewhere. C.A. Bayly has a piece on <span style="font-style: italic;">swadeshi</span> movement in general, that pre-dates Gandhi, Lisa Trivedi devoted an entire monograph to <span style="font-style: italic;">Clothing Gandhi's Nation: Homespun and Modern India</span>, and more recently, Fr. Peter Gonsalves has written on the same subject from the perspective of major theories in cultural/communication studies (see comment below for book title). Emma Tarlo, working as an ethnographer in Gujarat, was the first to treat clothing as used in Gujarat from a holistic, anthropological perspective in her book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Clothing Matters</span>. It includes a chapter on Gandhi as well. Bernard S. Cohn has two wonderful essays on the multiple meanings of cloth during the period of Mughal rule, and Arjun Appadurai's "The Social Life of Things" is also a starting point. For American studies, Laurel Ulrich's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Age of Homespun</span> is both pioneering and brilliant in its interdisciplinary conception. Finally, random keyword Google searching using Google "Scholar" or "Books" is likely to be more useful than Blog searching. You found me, but I haven't had much to offer until now. The photo above was taken by me in Patan in 2006. The Salvi family produced the garments of Southeast Asian royalty, prized pieces of which are hanging in the V &amp; A right by the Ardebil carpet. Good luck in your researches. I hope that I have been somewhat more helpful with this post, though this is still but the tip of a very large iceberg!http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2009/02/meaning-of-clothing-more-informative.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-2728033326217953116Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:26:00 +00002009-03-08T07:22:38.496-04:00Loins of Punjab PresentsOutsourcedSlumdog MillionaireTaj MahalThe Taj Mahal: How To Mow the Lawn<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SWLv4BK0ozI/AAAAAAAAAE0/VSHTA55nrFw/s1600-h/DSC_7296.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SWLv4BK0ozI/AAAAAAAAAE0/VSHTA55nrFw/s200/DSC_7296.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5288052658151924530" border="0" /></a><br />I remember seeing dozens of people on the ground in Beijing cutting the grass with scissors. Also in Mysore, on the grounds of Tipu Sultan's Palace. Definitely a solution to unemployment when there is no shortage of manual labor. But who do you call to do the groundskeeping at a World Cultural Heritage Site, like Shah Jahan's famous "teardrop"in Agra? Cattle? Cows? Bullocks! Yes, <span style="font-weight: bold;">bullocks</span>! Not exactly "horsepower," but why be so ethnocentric in our language use? The men on the side were there to pick up the fresh cuttings and pile them into the cart. You can see this in stunning pseudo-3-D in the "Better Anaglyphs 3" Album (you will need your red-blue glasses, of course). For mortals, here is the original 2-D image. It is real,not "Photoshopped." Who could make up something like this? Only in India, where a new verse to the national anthem could begin with the words, "Expect the Unexpected." By the way, after you have seen <span style="font-style: italic;">Slumdog Millionaire,</span> get <span style="font-style: italic;">"Loins of Punjab Presents,"</span> a much funnier and less nauseating tale of talent on the rise. THEN, get a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Outsourced</span> from Netlix and watch it for a glimpse of our global future. Our President is preparing us for the worst. Start learning a useful language: Hindi, maybe, but Kannada, Tamil, Mandarin perhaps but Cantonese may be better. Who knows? I am considering the establishment of a voice-coaching school so that folks in the U.S. can learn "Hinglish" and be prepared to help consumers on the other end of the line, when this sort of work becomes more available here. What's with this Americanization crap in the international call centers? But I need to do this fast before the work ends up in Vietnam, or, dare I say it? North Korea? (stranger things have happened)http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2009/01/taj-mahal-how-to-mow-lawn.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-3217455957613257765Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:50:00 +00002009-01-04T10:57:36.528-05:003-D glassesKodak Ektarstereoscopic 3-D photographyThank You, Kodak<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SV7O02Zr8vI/AAAAAAAAAEs/aqEadYVX2Jc/s1600-h/DSCN0009.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 122px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SV7O02Zr8vI/AAAAAAAAAEs/aqEadYVX2Jc/s200/DSCN0009.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286890419931312882" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SV7ORtPt2_I/AAAAAAAAAEk/wlZEPtzakcE/s1600-h/DSCN0006.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 188px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SV7ORtPt2_I/AAAAAAAAAEk/wlZEPtzakcE/s200/DSCN0006.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286889816178154482" /></a> This post is for camera nuts and if you're not into photography you definitely should stop reading now. Unless you are considering dusting off that SLR that's been sitting around for so long. So here's the news: Thank you Kodak for going against the grain (pun definitely intended!). Thank you thank you thank you for bringing back to life the best print film ever made, now faster than ASA 25. Some of my indoor, artificially lit digital shots that are not perfectly exposed because I am using the M8 with the older Leica flash on "Auto" require too much post-processing, especially of people's faces that are within the frame but not the main subject. And they still come out looking awful. I have always been flash averse and I am never going to put one of those enormous and expensive Metz gizmos on top of my rangefinder. I have noticed the same mud-faced people phenomenon using Nikon digital armed with a much more versatile, bouncable and dedicated flash. <span style="font-weight:bold;">THE BOTTOM LINE: ANOTHER GREAT REASON TO KEEP SHOOTING FILM!<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span> Maybe it's just me, but here's what I think. You are never gonna get faces in your pix that look like zombies from the center of the earth with scans from color positive film negatives! I shot a roll of this magnificent stuff, took it to Walgreen's. The guy told me he could do it in a few hours, but heck, I'm still old school and I can wait a day. Used to wait a week for Kodachromes from Fairlawn, NJ! Got the negatives and a CD for 5.99. Even at a modest drug-store 1 MB or so the scans were astonishing. The resolution of this film is beyond belief. I don't know what the cost of getting a gazillion megapixels and a full-frame sensor would be merely to replicate this quality. If I want a custom enlargement, all I need to do is have one made by the pros! Drugstore scan at 1 MB is fine for uploading to web, not too big, not too small. The main point, and best part, however, is that all the faces look human. I got 100% perfect exposures with the older Leica p.o.c. flash but of course this time I was using the M7 and TTL. So one could say it wasn't really my doing, and they would be right: it is Kodak's doing! <span style="font-weight:bold;">PREDICTION</span>: Just as the movie theaters will increasingly have to go 3-D to stay alive, I think that stereo photography will make a comeback. A market will emerge for better and more convenient ways to make, share, and view 3-D, perhaps even holographic images. I am still trying to figure out how to work with depthmaps for 2-D conversions for best results, and have uploaded my latest efforts (above). When I get my beam splitter I will start to share results of real stereo pairs, so get those 3-D glasses ready (there are a few online sources). If you have a collection of old film camera lens filters lying around, and a big pair of dollar-store reader eyeglass frames that you can pop the lenses out of, you can make your own like the one pictured above.http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2009/01/thank-you-kodak.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-8524328661216428176Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:36:00 +00002008-12-22T00:07:46.331-05:003-D imagesstereoscopic 3-D photographyTaj MumbaiThe Taj Mumbai in 3-D<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SU8evAhJKEI/AAAAAAAAAEc/HHy1nZ_BSyk/s1600-h/TAJ+MUMBAI+for+blog.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 311px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SU8evAhJKEI/AAAAAAAAAEc/HHy1nZ_BSyk/s400/TAJ+MUMBAI+for+blog.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282474680870578242" /></a><br />More photography related: I have been fooling around lately with a program for converting 2-D to 3-D images(anaglyphs) while awaiting arrival of a beam splitter for making true stereoscopic image pairs with my digital SLR. Here is a photo of a portion of the Taj Mumbai that I took in 2006. I converted it to 3-D using the program, which created a file of nearly 12 MB that I then resampled in Photoshop. It's not truly eye-popping, but I think it's not bad either. If you have a pair of 3-D glasses preferably red-blue (rather than red-cyan and definitely not red-green) you will get a nice effect with nearly true rendering of colors. If you don't have any glasses, even the cardboard kind, try putting an R60 infrared filter over your left eye and an 80A blue filter over your right eye --- it will work!http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2008/12/taj-mumbai-and-birds-in-3-d.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-1262438605612697026Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:36:00 +00002009-03-06T16:24:25.686-05:00Arabs and IsraelisFood and Globalizationfood studies globalization of foodIsraelPeaceful CoexistenceIsrael-Arab Peaceful Coexistence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SUvi1hdHbEI/AAAAAAAAAEE/czmnf_9HYQ0/s1600-h/DSCN0085.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 307px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SUvi1hdHbEI/AAAAAAAAAEE/czmnf_9HYQ0/s320/DSCN0085.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281564397163473986" border="0" /></a><br />Another food and globalization post. I recently read of attempts by people to encourage a mass boycott of food products from Israel. Of course, boycotting Israel and boundless hatred for it is old-hat. I won't start on comparing/contrasting/weighing the rights and wrongs of Israel/Palestine versus the sum total of atrocities commmitted between 1937 and 1945, the Soviet Union pre-Kruschev, Mao's China in the late 50's and 60's-early 70's, genocidal conflicts in Africa and southeastern Europe, the Partition of the Punjab in 1947, Saddam's Iraq, the current imploding of Zimbabwe, and so on and so on. Such "weighing" is itself irrational and unjust. But I don't mind at all seeing the Israeli food products right next to products from Lebanon, Syria, and even first quality "Mecca Dates" from Saudi Arabia on the shelves of the ethnic grocery store. On the other hand, I do hate to think that this is the only place where their producers will ever peacefully coexist. What a shame, selfish hatreds. Can't stand it, can't stand the people who perpetuate them. Does that make me a hater too?http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2008/12/israel-arab-peaceful-coexistence.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-2034794046512816875Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:17:00 +00002009-03-06T16:21:00.757-05:00Indian FoodMeals Ready to EatNavaratriOutsourcingTrader Joe'sWhole FoodsOutsourcing / Insourcing? What the IT Bachelors Eat<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SUvEeoXc5EI/AAAAAAAAADk/onBOvj1gLUI/s1600-h/DSCN0125.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SUvEeoXc5EI/AAAAAAAAADk/onBOvj1gLUI/s320/DSCN0125.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281531018532938818" border="0" /></a><br />OK, so when the issue is one of a big company importing hundreds of IT workers from India on short-term visas, and undoubtedly paying them less than what their American college-graduate counterparts would require, I don't know which term to use. But since I am devoting so much of this blogspace to food ethnography, I might as well inform anyone who is interested as to just WHY we see --- in upscale Whole Foods and Trader Joe's as well as the humble Indo-Pak grocery stores and even more humble Job Lot/Salvage stores --- thousands of boxes of MREs made for the Indian Ministry of Defense. Must be for all those vegetarian South Asian college and graduate students who didn't grow up in the States, right? Well, sure. Or perhaps also: let's market authentic tasting (and that they are) Indian veg dishes to Americans who are interested in that sort of thing. Yeah, that too. But really, I suspect that they are mainly for the bachelors. The uncountable number of young Indian graduates who are employed by an uncountable number of companies here in the U.S. What self-respecting Indian housewife or Auntie or whoever other female is going to spend even $1.00 for a few ounces of something they could whip up a whole pot of for the same money? I am told on good authority that there are entire apartment buildings downtown inhabited by FOB bachelors, here just for a while. They show up, <span style="font-style: italic;">sans</span> traditional clothing, at Navaratri celebrations and stick by the walls of the gym, adoring and jealous. I suppose that as long as India and Pakistan do not go to war, the surplus MREs will end up here. Which reminds me of the cornflakes made in Egypt that I found in a beach-town Dollar Store several years ago. Complete with red barn and rooster. Yes, that's right: surplus corn, a New World cereal grain, is being made into cornflakes in Egypt, where the average household income is about $700 per year, and they are being shipped for sale to North America. I'll have to find the box and write a post about it. Bottled sauces and other condiments from anywhere else in the world are one thing; there are unique recipes for limepickle and rooster sauce and whatnot. But those are from the pre-microwave age! This is a whole new era...http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2008/12/outsourcing-and-insourcing-what-it.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-3532017902774015977Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:19:00 +00002009-01-31T12:26:35.651-05:00Frito-LayglobalizationIndiaPepsicopotato chipsGlobalization and the Potato Chip<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SUu5hLsNCUI/AAAAAAAAADU/6zPwJ7a46Qk/s1600-h/DSCN0075.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SUu5hLsNCUI/AAAAAAAAADU/6zPwJ7a46Qk/s320/DSCN0075.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281518967747053890" /></a><br />Had a bit of free time last week to poke around nearby Indo-Pak groceries, but not just for buying. I am always on the lookout for material for my blog, which is really just the online expression of my interests including eating and photography, and anything related to the "hidden in plain sight" connections between the local and the global. So my little bit of fieldwork in food ethnography has yielded the following. World history teaches us that the humble potato made its way out of Peru about 500 years ago. We now find it virtually everywhere, and just as the image of Colonel Sanders has taken over that of Mao in China, when in India one could easily get the impression that the Frito-Lay logo is a national icon. <span style="font-style:italic;">Ma nahi samjha, </span> I mean, like, one doesn't merely see bags of chips here and there, one sees them in every humble steet-side stall next to every other street-side stall providing internet service and other telecommunications (STDs!) and chewing gum. They are hanging splendiforously in multi-coloured rows, everywhere, like the fluttering sarees and dupattas in the mustard fields of a dozen or more Bollywood movies, each bag attached to the next and awaiting perforation by a buyer eager to taste "Rajasthani" or "Hyderabadi" flavors. Well, I already knew that I could buy the cheaper Indian version of Coca-Cola ("Thumbs Up") here in the States, and wondered why anyone would want to, including my son whose brief obsession for it abruptly ended when we discovered rot beneath the bottle cap. When we were in India, our group unanimously decided that the local no-brand and cheaper version of potato chips were much better than anything that Frito-Lay could muster, despite the efforts of Pepsico and Indra Nooryi. Don't get me started on water for Coca-Cola and what Monsanto has been up to in the subcontinent. Well, to get to the point, I was used to seeing the bags of New Jersey-made snacks (<span style="font-style:italic;">bhujia</span>, etc.) also <span style="font-style:italic;">chaat</span> like the Haldiram's brand made in the land of <span style="font-style:italic;">Horn OK Please</span> / <span style="font-style:italic;">Mera Bharat Mahan</span>, but I was completely unprepared for the latest arrival: FRITO-LAYS AMERICAN STYLE CREAM AND ONION, 2.8 0z. for 20 Rupees (less than 50 cents) in India and $1.39 here!!! Yeah, it costs a lot to get all those bags onto container ships and distributed to stores 10,000 miles away!!! For radicals who think it's bad enough that Frito-Lay is even in India or KFC in China this must surely be the tipping point! Let slip the dogs of war! Well, yes, of course I bought a bag. I had to taste and see, especially since they were labelled "Snack Smart" with 0 transfats (so we're globalizing fitness as well, I guess). What's next? Cream-free dal dishes and artificial substitutes for ghee? For the unbelievers, I attach a photo. There they were, right next to the Israeli pretzels and the Indian-made fried chickpeas (I guess the pretzels are justifiable because of the laws of Kashrut; if Manischewitz made them here I am sure they would taste awful and have to say something on the label like "Made in a plant that also processes carp, <span style="font-style:italic;">shmaltz</span>, and horseradish"). More food for thought, from the smorgasbord of my mind.http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2008/12/globalization-and-potato-chip.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-9161890142239150298Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:32:00 +00002008-12-19T10:16:18.590-05:00India communalismJewsMumbaiTaj hotelterrorismMumbai & the Taj Mahal Hotel<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SUu6uq3bC_I/AAAAAAAAADc/QHqlKA9mzOg/s1600-h/DSC_4237.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SUu6uq3bC_I/AAAAAAAAADc/QHqlKA9mzOg/s320/DSC_4237.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281520298965535730" border="0" /></a><br />In the summer of '06, in the company of 14 other American educators I was privileged to travel for six weeks throughout India. Of course, in Mumbai we visited India Gate, on the Arabian Sea, standing for a while across from the architecturally magnificent Taj hotel. I had a Taj hotel story to tell, involving my mother-in-law and her family, Jews who fled Vienna when it came under Nazi rule in March 1938. They went first to Paris, where her father re-opened his business as an agent who booked entertainment for venues all over the world (much later, as a refugee in New York, he arranged for all of those European jugglers and acrobats who appeared on the Ed Sullivan show that I watched as a kid, unaware of course that I would eventually marry his granddaughter). Needless to say, in Paris they needed to rebuild their lives and resources. Before I went to India, my mother-in-law ("Oma" to my children), told me about a "Mr. Bannerjee" who was a Manager at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. He played a key role in money transfers to her father, avoiding the Austrian banks that were now "Aryanized" by Nazis who,led by the infamous Eichmann, immediately began to terrorize and incarcerate Jews (My father-in-law and his brother were sent to Dauchau; he survived, but my wife's uncle was eventually transferred to Buchenwald and murdered by his captors). So, as I stood before the Taj, I couldn't help but marvel not only at the site but also ponder my personal connection to its past. And now, we hear of the victimization of Jews in Mumbai as well. As a survivor of terrorism myself, I would hope that readers of this post understand that just as the Holocaust was no "mystery", as some would have it, neither is the source of the violence that has been plaguing India, Israel, and other parts of the world for years if not decades. Whatever the injustices of the past and present, there is nothing that justifies these atrocities committed in the name of religion. And what will it bring? Further atrocities and a cycle of revenge? What, I ask, is "the first cause" of this cycle? The answer lies in insane ideologies, especially religious but also nationalist. To be sure, we may all, for justifiable reasons, be driven to madness. But now I also wonder: what will the apologists for those who have committed this violence in Mumbai write in the coming days? That it is "senseless" and has nothing to do with "a real and true" religion? That it is the "natural reaction" of disaffected and victimized youth? That it is a conspiracy hatched by you know who you know who and you know who? Everyone but the guilty are guilty, it seems. Enough already. Of course, I don't have an answer. But it seems now that the Indian Government must, in a unified way, act hard on two fronts: one, against the sources of this violence, no matter where it leads; and two, to prevent its own citizens from rising up against one another in communal violence. This is a new chapter, a new phase, and it demands action.http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2008/11/mumbai-taj-hotel.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-2439621682257924041Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:55:00 +00002011-01-18T22:39:59.728-05:00dandiyagarbaLagaanRadha KrishnaBollywood PerfectionYou must watch, by whatever means you can, the "Krishna's Birthday" scene from Laagan (2001), which was India's Oscar entry for best foreign film that year. The lead male dances as if he were Sri Krsna the cowherder and beloved of all the cowherdesses (gopis) simultaneously. Hence the flute playing gestures which replicate paintings of Krishna, and the jealousy of Radha, his divine consort. The religious theme is transposed to a 19th century village setting in which a village girl finds that she must compete for the attention of the male lead (Aamir Khan, not insignificantly an actor of Muslim heritage dancing as Krishna) upon whom the eyes of a British white lady have also fallen. Many Bollywood films are cheesy, many are worthwhile. This, by the director of the also magnificent <span style="font-style: italic;">Swades</span> (2004), is one of the best.http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2008/08/bollwood-perfection.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6095560084464855459.post-7846420501378635490Sun, 11 May 2008 15:07:00 +00002009-03-06T16:12:38.798-05:00decisive momentHenri-Cartier Bressonhow to take better picturesTwo More VERY MODEST examples of "decisive moments" in Photography<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SCcRqNy2CvI/AAAAAAAAAAw/bYaSUkfNWiU/s1600-h/L1001000.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SCcRqNy2CvI/AAAAAAAAAAw/bYaSUkfNWiU/s320/L1001000.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199143711777622770" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SCcQ19y2CuI/AAAAAAAAAAo/0aizyUT0o2Q/s1600-h/L1000735.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_LN4_04NgkJQ/SCcQ19y2CuI/AAAAAAAAAAo/0aizyUT0o2Q/s320/L1000735.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199142814129457890" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Both of these pictures were taken in London, in February. The first is a composition that presented itself to me as dusk was approaching, in Trafalgar Square. It is of interest only because it has eight people in it all caught at an instant when they were "doing something," however trivial. Of course, we are all always "doing something." But in this case, although the photograph is admittedly mediocre, I think that both the composition and timing were just right. Of course, if most of the subjects were doing even more interesting things, besides just trying to relax or get into a good pose for taking pictures of their own, then it would be a better shot. The second photo is of my son playing a hand-held video game while we were on the Bakerloo line of the Underground. The older man seated next to him is most likely unfamiliar with the Nintendo DS, and was wondering what on earth my son was doing. In this shot, it is the cast of the gentleman's eyes and the expression on his face that makes it (almost) a fine "people pic". I DO have better examples but I will need more time to use a film scanner and get some older material digitized. My aim, at this moment, is simply to elaborate on my ideas about what makes one photograph better than another. And, to reiterate, I make no claims of greatness here! Both of these were taken with the Leica M8. If you are using any kind of advanced digital camera, and the controls allow it, some good rules of thumb would include: (1) GET THE "WHITE BALANCE" OFF OF THE "AUTOMATIC" SETTING and adjust it for the type of light conditions. And (2) set the camera to produce two images of simultaneously, BOTH a JPEG Fine at the best possible resolution and a "RAW" of NEF or DNG image. You are going to need larger capacity and higher speed memory cards for this!<br /></span>http://thelocalisglobal.blogspot.com/2008/05/two-more-very-modest-examples-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Michael)0